Of Mice and Men and Murdering Misfits

Flannery O’Connor and John Steinbeck

By Dwight Longenecker

Browsing my bookshelves recently, I plucked out John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella Of Mice and Men. One of the most prescribed works of fiction at the high school level, the story of two migrant workers in California is a classic of American letters. As such, it is also a potent tract for American utilitarian secularism.

Shrewd George Milton travels from Ranch to ranch with his lumbering, imbecilic sidekick Lennie Small who likes to “pet soft things” like mice and rabbits. Unfortunately the thick headed, soft hearted brute too often ends up killing the mice and bunnies. On the run after Lennie alarmed a young woman by stroking her soft red dress (while she was wearing it) George and Lennie roll up at the next ranch. When an old bitch pups a litter, Lennie claims one of the puppies, which also ends up dead from an excess of his attention.

Meanwhile, Candy an older ranch worker who lost a hand in a farm accident, allows his smelly old sheep dog to be euthanized — shot in the head by one of the bunkmates who is annoyed by the blind old hound.

Eventually Lennie gets into a conversation with the lonely wife of Curly — the pugnacious boss’s son. Predictably (for Steinbeck has foreshadowed the event rather heavy handedly) Lennie starts to stroke her soft…